Beware of Toner Scams in Denver!!

Pushy Toner Sales Rep!

Toner Sales reps are notorious for being unsavory sales reps. They call and trick and there are so many of them, it’s hard to avoid getting scammed a few times! So, since we want to earn your toner business, not steal your money, we decided to put together the most common scam methods for toner sales.

Call in and ask — Do you still have a _______ Copier? Oh, you don’t? What is it now? Well, we were asked to send toner because we have this special deal on that cartridge. Can you tell me where you want it sent? (getting compliance)
We are down to our last __ toner cartridges for your (when they know what you have from previous calls)… So you don’t run out, we will send them out today.
Can we send you a free toner cartridge? Great! Then you start getting bills for the toner.
They call into the company and get someone who doesn’t order toner to agree to let them send it. For example, our contact at Denver Health has had to get the Better Business Bureau involved when scam artists have tried to sell toner to graveyard nurses…

What can you do?

Buy from companies you know and trust, or local companies who can meet face to face with you.
Don’t agree to terms when a toner phoner calls!
Don’t take “free cartridges” from a company you have never heard of.
Use common sense! If it feels all wrong, it probably is.

The Hardest Cartridges to Remanufacturer

: Challenging Toner Production

Anyone who sells toner, remanufactures toner or deals with a lot of printers knows there are a few cartridges which are notoriously a huge pain to remanufacture well. The ones that we see which have the biggest issues (and have made us switch suppliers based on quality concerns) are the HP Color Laserjet 5500, HP Color Laserjet 5550, and the HP Laserjet 9000 series cartridges.

As you break these cartridges apart to pun in a new drum and new wiper blades, you almost have to put back together a swiss clock. There are many challenges, and if a remanufacturer does not have dedicated employees for the build of these cartridges.

What do we do to help deal with these issues?

We track these cartridges to make sure our suppliers have reasonable defective rates for these. We assume a 2% to be acceptable failure rate on these.
We make sure the remanufacturers will also guarantee the printer if the cartridge itself causes printer damage
We go to the factories and distribution centers from time to time to check their quality
We use ISO certified companies for our suppliers. ISO guarantees a consistent PROCESS, not necessarily a good product, but if we find a company that seems to have a good product and they are ISO certified, we generally will keep getting good products.

If you need toner here in Denver, give us a call!

Don't Gamble With Toner

I was looking around online at “refilled” cartridges this morning. In this economy it’s easy to look for the cheapest toner cartridge to do your printing. However, you often get what you pay for. If you are looking at “refilled” cartridges, what you are probably going to get are what we in the industry call “drill and fill.” They are pretty much exactly what they sound like.

With the “drill and fill” method, a hole is drilled into a common cartridge (like the HP Q1338A, Q1339A, Q5942X, or the Q5945A). Dry toner powder is then poured in the drilled hole (often drilled or melted), and the hole gets patched up with a rubber plug. This method is NOT recommended.

First, the chances of getting plastic shavings in your toner are are very high.

Second, the toner available online is NOT the same as the manufacturer’s toner (generally far inferior).

Third, if the plug comes out, it will damage your machine and create a huge mess!

Fourth, if your cartridge does explode, it is not covered under warranty, and you are going to either lose every penny you saved by having your printer cleaned and/or replaced.

Fifth, If you do “drill and fill,” the components of the cartridge, may last for one “fill,” but after more than once, print quality will suffer noticeably.

So, the basic theme here is this: if you are looking for a cheaper way to print, make sure it is with a cartridge that has unused quality parts, quality toner, and a good warranty. Gambling on a cheap cartridge is about like betting at a casino…over the long haul, you just won’t win. Call us at Pahoda Image Products with your printing needs!

Toner Phoners: Watch Your Wallets!

I was talking to an IT director yesterday, and she gave me a good idea for a blog post: Toner Phoners. The scam has been around for a while, and the severity of what it can do to your wallet depends on how horrible of people you’re dealing with. Letting your office people (especially new hires) know about it is extremely important. The details may vary, but the basic formula is something like this:

Toner Phoner: “Hey, this is Bob over at _______ Office products, and we’re getting ready to ship out your order, I was wondering if you could read the model number of your office printer to me again. I just want to double check we have the right stuff in your order.”

New Office Person: “Oh, um, yep we’ve got a Xerox Phaser 8860 at our printing center.”

Toner Phoner: “OK, we’ll get that toner you ordered sent right over.”

The company will then be sent a bunch of sub-standard compatibles at exorbitant rates. If you are the victim, DO NOT use the products! They are normally incredibly cheap, and if one leaks in your printer, they are not under warranty, so you just got soaked for toner and a printer. If you are familiar with toner cartridges, you can usually tell how quality a cartridge is by its weight: cheap cartridges will be much lighter due to the lack of toner in them. If you are the victim of a toner phoner, look at the government’s site to help you know your rights: FTC.gov/boss

Like I’ve said before, if you are going to use compatibles, make sure they are under warranty, and don’t overbuy (as returning old toner can be a hassle). Buy from local companies with people you know and trust. Give us a call with your toner needs!

How Toner Works: A Guide for the Curious

Toner Denver-How it works

Lots of people use laser printers, but if you asked them how printers and toner work, they’d look at you like you asked them to explain quantum mechanics. So, here’s a brief overview of how the toner goes from those plastic cases to the full-color spreads your advertizing team loves.

With most models (Kyocera and a couple others are different) a laser beam projects an image of the page you want onto an electrically charged rotating drum coated with a chemical (usually selenium). The light causes the selenium to react, and it removes charge from the areas exposed to light. Dry ink (the toner) particles are picked up by the drum’s charged areas due to the electronegativity of the toner. The drum then prints the image onto paper by direct contact, and heat (from the fuser) adheres the ink to the paper.

This is important to understand when your prints are looking funky. If your print has lots of lines through it, the problem is probably your drum (especially if the patterns are predictable and similar). If the toner is flaking off the page, the problem is probably your fuser (not heating the toner enough to cause it to stick to the paper). People can waste money buying the wrong parts and still having the printer issue. Like the NBC ads used to say “The More You Know.” If you have questions about toner or printing needs, give us a call!

Toner Bombs — How Much Time Do You Have?

In an effort to save money, some customers will buy the CHEAPEST cartridges in the market. This is not an effective strategy. Of course price is not the only factor in quality, but there is a relationship between price and quality. What we normally work on doing is getting customers to purchase supplies which are high quality but not the highest price. What does this mean? Well, for an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) cartridge, maybe you would pay $179 for the standard capacity for your printer… A high quality compatible will normally come in about $129 and the cheapest will come in at about $69 or $79. The $69 and $79 cartridges will generally be the ones with these sorts of problems.

Another clue that you are probably not using the best supplier is if you get what is called a “toner bomb.” A toner bomb is what happens when a cartridge is sent and it basically explodes inside it’s packaging. It takes hours to clean up if it explodes inside a printer in shipping (this is not a literal explosion, but the explosion is the effect if has…)

Hope this helps and if you need toner in the Denver or Front Range area, give us a call! Remember, we can deliver the same day in emergencies!